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<pre>Thanks to all for you for your comments and suggestions. You helped
us resolve the problem. Ended up our system had been hacked. The bad
binary files my Perl script was creating were a symptom. When the Perl's
i/o subsystem creates a binary file, it buffers it in the Linux /tmp
directory. /tmp is a really a virtual disk used as a scratch area.
Because of the hack /tmp was 100% full. When perl's i/o subsystem creates
a text file, it just opens it in the desired location as you'd expect.
The perplexing part is that when you run as Root, the Perl I/o does not
buffer in /tmp. I think it uses the local directory. This is the reason
script ran as root, but not as a user. It was failing because /tmp was
filled.
Our hacker had only managed to damage us and not compromise the operating
system. By the way, if you are looking for an excellent company for
managed hosting, take a look at Rackspace.com . Their
"fanatical" support is the real deal.
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